Location
Location is a measure of how far a park sits from the nearest large city, and whether it is near something guests travel specifically to reach.
Market type
Your market type is derived from how far you are from the nearest large city, and whether you sit near something guests travel specifically to reach.
| Market type | Where it sits | Who it draws |
|---|---|---|
| City edge | A short drive from a large city | Weekend escapes and short breaks, booked late by people who did not need to plan |
| Drive-to | A deliberate drive from a metro area, but not a trip you build a holiday around | Planned weekends and overnights from a known catchment |
| Destination | Far from any city, anchored to something guests travel for | Longer, planned stays; guests pass closer parks to reach yours |
| Remote | Far from any city, with no major anchor nearby | Solitude, dispersed recreation, and road-trip stopovers |
Drive distance to nearest city
City distance is measured as an actual drive, not a straight line. For hotels the two are nearly the same, because hotels sit where roads are dense. Parks do not.
A campground can be 18 miles from a city as the crow flies and 55 miles by the only road over the ridge. Straight-line distance would call it suburban. Its guests know better, and so does its booking pattern. Measuring the drive is what keeps mountain, coastal, and island parks classified as what they actually are.
Major attractions
Distance from a city is only half the picture. A park far from any city might be genuinely remote or it might sit at the gate of a national park and fill twelve months ahead. Those two operate nothing alike, so OHR checks what surrounds a park before deciding which it is.
National park units
National parks are major attractions that vistors often travel out of their way to see. We see a lot of RV traffic and camping demand generated in proximity to NPS destinations.
Oceans & coastlines
Coasts are another frequent attraction that drives camping and RV travel. We calculate your parks proximity to these kinds of water features as a part of our location profiling.
Major lakes and reservoirs
Similar to coasts, major lakes are are destination driver in the outdoor hospitality industry. OHR accounts for your parks proximity to large bodies of water and popular in-land water destinations.
Major ski resorts
Ski resorts are a common attraction for winter-forward parks. Similar to other attractions, OHR captures the nearest Ski resorts to your park as another facet of the location profile that your park recieves.
Edge cases
Several anchors at once. A park near a lake, a national park, and a ski resort has all of them recorded. Sharing more than one with another park makes for a closer match.
Just outside an anchor radius. A park beyond the radius is classified on the rest of its context, and is compared to parks in the same position rather than to gateway resorts.